An empathetic—but not entirely sympathetic—portrait of women in the male-dominated society of post-Elizabethan England.
Jago’s novel retrieves two women “from the limbo of misogynist stereotype”: the Countess of Essex, Frances Howard, and commoner Anne Turner, both of whom were charged with fatally poisoning a courtier in the Overbury scandal, which rocked the court of King James I in early-17th-century England.
The women have strong wills and good looks in common. They are also both dangerously Catholic during a Protestant monarchy. But their friendship is never quite equal as seen through Anne’s eyes. Married to the duke’s personal physician, she holds a patent for the yellow starch used in ruffs and dabbles in designing dresses for high-born ladies to make ends meet. Frances is a member of the politically influential Howard family (as were two wives of Henry VIII, as Wolf Hall fans may remember). In 1609, Anne has been hired to help the 18-year-old countess dress to win over her impotent 17-year-old husband, the Earl of Essex, who has been whipping Frances raw during their loveless three-year marriage. (Almost as an aside, 34-year-old Anne brags that her own impotent husband condones her long affair with the father of her three youngest children.) As narrator, Anne at first seems more observer than participant, an outsider sharing her insights on the nobility, particularly Frances—a great beauty with a defiant streak—but it becomes clear that Anne recognizes that helping Frances reach her magnetic potential at court may raise her own station. As Essex’s vicious attacks escalate, Frances begins an affair with Sir Robert Carr, King James’ favorite, and the newly widowed and increasingly impoverished Anne becomes her sole confidante. Both idolizing and resenting the countess’s self-centered privilege, Anne finds herself helping Frances acquire potions and illegal magic to control first Essex, then Carr’s malevolent aide Thomas Overbury. Frances' motivations are clear: passion and revenge. But Anne’s are a murkier mix of loyalty, desperation, and ambition.
An empathetic—but not entirely sympathetic—portrait of women in the male-dominated society of post-Elizabethan England.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-26195-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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